Construindo a experiência: uma descrição sistêmico-funcional da ideação em português brasileiro

Abstract

This research investigates how human experience is construed through discourse. More specifically, it proposes the description of the IDEATIONAL discourse semantic system of Brazilian Portuguese in the introduction section of Health Science scientific papers from the perspective of the Systemic Functional Linguistics. (cf. MARTIN, 1992; MARTIN; ROSE, 2007). In accordance with Martin (1992) and Martin and Rose (2007), this system is responsible for organizing taxonomic relations, which are established by the entities. This definition resembles Halliday and Hasan’s proposition (1976), that analyzed strands of semantic relations, such as lexical repetition, synonymy, contrast, among others. By the bye, “entities” are defined as nominal elements that provide lexical cohesion in discourse. (cf. MARTIN, 1992; MARTIN; ROSE, 2007; HAO, 2015; 2020). Nevertheless, considering that both lexicon and grammar belong to the same strata, called lexicogrammar, and that, according to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), these relations are established at the discourse semantics strata, this association fits the definition of textual cohesion. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), textual cohesion concerns the semantic relations that are established, according to Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1992), Martin and Rose (2007), in discourse semantics. For the description, the phenomenon under study was investigated in the introduction section of Health Science scientific papers extracted from Corpus Acadêmico do Português Brasileiro (CAPB) (MIRANDA; OLIVEIRA; OLIVEIRA, 2018). Then, the texts were segmented into figures, and the entity and its units were identified on the tool INCEpTION, a semantic annotation platform. After the data annotation, the description of the IDEATIONAL system functions was performed in accordance with the linguistic description methodology based on the trinocular perspective. (cf. HALLIDAY, MATTHIESSEN, 1997). It allows to explore this phenomenon “from above”, identifying similarities between register patterns realized by the same semantic system; “from below”, recognizing grammar composition similarities; and “from around”, spotting contrasts between the functions that play the same systemic role. Finally, this study defined “entity”, which is an element that establishes discourse semantic relations, such as cause, focus, comparison, definition, composition, as well as its units, namely substance, metaphor, class, quality, quantity. This research showed that the discourse semantic relations established by the entities contribute to build gender, which occurs in specific steps and stages. As a result, it contributes to the Systemic Functional Theory, since it promotes discussions able to broaden the studies on the discourse semantics strata, as well as contributes to expand a methodology for describing the most abstract strata of the language.